


we have not touched the stars, nor are we forgiven

by permets (malreves)



Series: these, our bodies, possessed by light [2]
Category: Batman (Comics), DCU (Comics), Red Hood: Lost Days
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, M/M, Non-Linear Narrative, also sad but less sad than the last one i think!!!, but not a sad ending !!!, gratuitous use of siken, literally as always, not exactly a happy ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-08
Updated: 2018-08-08
Packaged: 2019-06-23 17:58:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,266
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15611811
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/malreves/pseuds/permets
Summary: We are all going forward. None of us are going back.





	we have not touched the stars, nor are we forgiven

**Author's Note:**

> all poetry/title/bio from the collection Crush by Richard Siken  
> for peak/optimal reading experience, listen to [dismantle by peter sandberg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qov25L1E4Ls) as you read  
> 

_There is no way to make this story interesting._

He thinks, a few years ago, he wouldn’t have dropped everything to push himself to the other side of the city, arms aching and body straining. A few years ago, it wouldn’t have meant anything to him to watch another person he knew die. He almost wished for that taste of apathy back, _almost_.

_You are a fever I am learning to live with_

–

_Look at the light through the windowpane. That means it’s noon, that means we’re inconsolable._

It ached, coming back from the pit. It stung, it buried its way right into his very bones, found a place in him that even he couldn’t reach to drag it out from and burrowed deeper yet still. It lived in the throb in his chest when he breathed in, it lived in the soreness of the backs of his thighs when he ran. It lived in the stiffness of his shoulder from the rounds he shot at the range, firing at a target he didn’t quite want to put a name to. It lived in the ache he became accustomed to, something as a part of him as the callouses that lined his hands, the scars that crept across his back.

It followed him, through all the places that Talia sent him, through all the trainers, the snow, the desert, the blood and the guns that were beginning to feel like home in the palms of his hands.

The flirtations, the roll of his shoulders and the tilt of his chin as he rediscovered what it felt like to want, to be wanted. The quiet marvel of skin on skin, slick with sweat and the hint of a bruise that Talia digs her thumb into to remind Jason that she’s here, that she’s the one he’s in bed with, even though his mind is far, far away. He’s fixed on blue eyes and slick back hair, high cheekbones and the soft slope of a pointed nose not yet broken. He’s fixed on red and yellow and green and hard planes where Talia is all soft curves. He’s fixed far away from here, anger and desolation burning through him until he can get back back back to them, to _him._

–

 _You wanted happiness, I can’t blame you for that,_  
_and maybe a mouth sounds idiotic when it blathers on about joy_  
_but tell me_  
_you love this, tell me you’re not miserable._

The apartment feels colder without Tim in it. It feels like something has stolen all the breath from the room, the warmth, holding it captive til he comes back.

Jason feels out the dip in the bed under his fingers that aren’t bandaged, closer to the window and still faintly clinging to the scent of cedar and sandalwood that he has come to recognize as _Tim_. He lies back down, arm spread over where Tim should be, and thinks about what started the argument this time. Was it finally too much? Watching the man he cared about be beaten and broken in more ways than he wanted to come to terms with, be rejected by his own family because of his understanding of morality? Was it finally too much, the sneaking around, the late night meet ups and furtive make-outs on iron fire escapes that leave a chill clinging to his bones that he just can’t shake?

The blatant disapproval that radiates from Bruce when Jason even so much as breathes in his direction, the clear look of _you could do so much better_ from Dick that stung, he had to admit, when he had watched that particular interaction between his former brother and Tim. Was it finally too much, no longer being what they wanted him to be, despite the fact that they had chosen Damian over Tim? Replaced his replacement without a second glance and left him, well, not for dead, but pretty damn close in Jason’s book. He knew the bitterness of being replaced well, the pain of being passed over still lingering in the back of his mind. He doubts Dick remembers much, anymore, remembers the bite his words had, the bruises he left on Jason when they sparred, the intentional trips and traps he would leave, all wide eyed and innocent when it came down to a culprit. Jason supposes, Dick doesn’t really remember them at all, all bitterness and resentment lost in the years in between then and now.

He wonders if he would ever be enough, to make up for everything else being too much.

–

 _And he knew it wasn’t going to be okay, and he told me_ _  
_ _it wasn’t going to be okay._

He’s almost there, but he knows he isn’t fast enough, knows he won't be fast enough can’t be fast enough knows–

Jason forces himself to breathe, push off from yet another unremarkable cement rooftop in Gotham and hopes, God forgive him, he _hopes_.

–

_We are all going forward. None of us are going back._

It’s funny, he thinks, seeing the sky without a speck of grey it in. The brightness of a late July afternoon, as if even Gotham couldn’t stomach the idea of something less than idyllic for Tim’s birthday. There are chairs scattered across the backyard of the Manor, clusters of white wicker chairs that Alfred must have hauled out for the occasion, relics left over from the grand garden parties the Waynes once were famous for, long before Jason ever thought of being part of this family. There’s a table, set out with lunch and a few pastries, mostly pitchers of ice water and iced coffee, glasses strewn about in the grass where they won’t be trampled on by an errant game of chase, or an impromptu dance.

Jason hangs back, closer to the patio than the party, watching Stephanie chase Tim with a smear of red frosting on her hand from the cupcakes Babs had surprised them with. Babs is seated comfortably near where Damian refuses to take part in the “childish games” that Stephanie has been subjecting Tim to since she and Cass arrived earlier in the afternoon. Jason watches as Bruce explains the Wayne family tradition of smashing cake into the birthday boy’s face, watches the delicate wrinkle of her nose and the confusion that settles across her eyebrows, and smothers a smile as he takes another pull from the now-warm bottle of beer in his hands.

“Hey little wing,” Dick says as he sits down beside Jason on the steps. He had gone inside to help Alfred with something or another, Jason can’t be assed to remember, and Jason mentally steadies himself for whatever it is that Dick is about to say to him. It’s been brewing for months: this _talk_ , this idea of a conversation Dick has been plaguing him to have. It followed him on patrol and through strained dinners with the family, through looks that even the a domino couldn’t hinder, and of course, Dick would use the first proper chance he had to corner Jason into it.

“Dick.” If Jason hunches just that much further into his beer, it isn’t entirely on purpose.

Dick stalls for a moment, as if tasting the words he wants to say on his tongue before he says them; a first, Jason thinks, a bit unkindly.

“You’re good for him, you know?” He says, at last, gesturing to where Stephanie has cornered Tim by the gazebo and is making a show of painting his face an artificial red.

Jason swallows, breath catching.

“I was worried, at first,” Dick continues, the faintest hint of pink scattering itself across his cheeks. “Worried that you were putting too much onto each other, leaning too hard and blocking everyone else out, but,” he sighs, and rests his head on Jason’s shoulder, always the tactile one. “I was wrong. You’re really what’s best for him. And I’m glad.”

Dicks looks up at Jason, hair partially obscuring his vision.

“For both of you, I’m glad. He’s what’s best for you, too.”

–

 _I wanted to take him home_  
_and rough him up and get my hands inside him, drive my body into his_ _  
like a crash test car._

There’s something intimate about being shot, Jason thinks. Something intimate in the act of shooting someone.

He sees the red, darker than the fabric that wraps around the Replacements chest, bloom and stain and spread. He watches the initial flinch at the sound of the shot being fired morph into a brief gasp at the pain of a broken bone, an embedded bullet. He watches the Replacement steady himself as Jason gains ground on him, then turn and run despite the distance between them and the Manor.

He chases him in the dark of Gotham’s night, rooftop by rooftop, until he’s close enough to taste the tang of blood in the air, the metallic sheen it coats everything in. He’s close enough to drag his thumb under his chin and release the safety locks on the hood, and pry it off before growling out “ _Replacement,_ ” and watches him whip around in shock.

They’re locked there, like that, for a moment, a fraction of an instant. Breathing heavily, within an arm's length of each other. Despite the domino on the Replacements face, Jason can see how young he is, how he can’t be more than fourteen, baby fat still rounding out the lines of his jaw despite the sharp cheekbones that fraim what little coverage he has on his face. Jason can see the cracked and chapped lips, bleeding from where he must have bit through to manage the pain in his shoulder, he can see the flare of his nostrils as the Replacement takes a deep breath. He sees a child, just like he was, sent out to do an impossible job. A soldier in a war that he shouldn’t even be a part of.

And Jason hates him all the more for it.

There’s something even more intimate, Jason thinks, about a good hook to the face.

–

 _And words, little words,_  
_words too small for any hope or promise, not really soothing_ _  
but soothing nonetheless._

It’s funny how it took them years to get here. Took them years of fighting, of insults and rooftop fights. Stolen kisses in back alleys where no one was watching, to family dinners where the only thing that could keep Tim from lunging across the table at Damian was Jason’s hand, steady on his knee.

Took years of early morning coffee runs, of late night hot dog runs. Buying a French press for his kitchen because Jason could abide by a lot of things, but a coffee maker wasn’t one of them. Took a surprise birthday party for Jason, turning twenty-four, stunned he had made it this far, stunned even more still at the number of people who were there to celebrate with him. There’s cake, frosting smeared carefully across his face by Tim’s slender fingers. It’s red, just like Tim’s, and somewhere in the back of his mind, Jason makes a note to ask Babs what bakery she’s picked them up from. The dye in the frosting stains Tim’s fingertips as Jason drags him into the bathroom to lick them clean one by one, before Steph forces him back out into the festivities. They’ve all been given the night off, crammed into the game room of the Manor, the night slowly delving into chaos as Bruce sat in the corner and watched the mish-mash of a family he had coaxed and stitched together, despite his best efforts at times to keep them apart. Cass wipes the floor with Jason in pool, while Dick and Damian take up a rather animated game of foosball. The windows are open and fireflies flicker in and out of the room, and as the night winds down to a pleasant murmur of activity, Tim tucks himself into Jason’s side.

“Happy Birthday, Jay.” He whispers, wrapping his arms around Jason’s middle, and leaning up to press a soft kiss to the underside of his jaw.

It’s funny, Jason thinks, how it took them years to get here at all.

–

 _Sorry_ _  
_ _about the blood in your mouth. I wish it was mine._

He’s too late.

He knows this.

Knows the time between when Babs told him where he needed to be and him getting there was too much to bridge the gap, too much to save him.

He’s too late, the sky in Gotham is grey, and there’s no such thing as Jason Todd getting what he wants.

They’ve strung him up like a doll, a little marionette, hanging by his wrists, blood still trickling down his chin. His boots are gone, and there’s no cape clinging to his shoulders. The fabric is torn away in places where the wounds are so vivid that Jason almost can’t tell where the fabric ends and the skin begins. They’ve strung him up and beat him red, and Jason does not cry out at the sight but it is a very near thing.

He gets closer, and closer still. Stands beneath where Tim hangs like a martyr and shakes as he shoots the chains down, shakes as he gathers Tim up in the cradle of his arms and feels where he’s still warm. Shakes, as he falls to the floor, shakes, as he feels for a pulse, shakes, as he feels it flutter beneath his fingertips.

 _Tell me how all this, and love too, will ruin us._  
_These, our bodies, possessed by light._ _  
Tell me we’ll never get used to it._


End file.
